BANGALORE , India -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Two-year-old Lakshmi Tatma , an Indian toddler born with four arms and four legs , made her first public appearance Tuesday , a week after surgeons in India successfully removed her additional limbs .

Doctors said Lakshmi was recovering well as she appeared Tuesday at a news conference .

Lakshmi , wearing a plaster cast on her legs to keep her feet up and her legs together to help her wounds heal , was carried into a news conference Tuesday as her doctors announced she was being released from intensive care .

`` She is coping very well , '' lead surgeon Dr. Sharan Patil said . `` She is being carried around by her mother and her father . ''

Several of her doctors , all of them smiling , described her recovery over the past week `` very steady and good progress , '' one saying she is `` out of the woods '' as far as serious medical issues are concerned . Watch the recovering little girl meet the media ''

The operation a week ago lasted 27 hours and involved a team of some 30 surgeons , all specialists in pediatrics , neurosurgery , orthopedics , and plastic surgery , working in eight-hour shifts .

Lakshmi 's extra limbs were part of a conjoined twin which stopped developing in the womb . It had a torso and limbs but no head , and was joined to Lakshmi at the pelvis .

Doctors said that without the surgery , Lakshmi would have been unlikely to survive beyond early adolescence .

The surgery involved the removal of the extra limbs and the repositioning of Lakshmi 's organs .

When Lakshmi was born into her poor , rural Indian family , villagers in the remote settlement of Rampur Kodar Katti in the northern state of Bihar believed she was sacred . As news of her birth spread , locals queued for a blessing from the baby .

Her parents , Shambhu and Poonam Tatma , named the girl after the Hindu goddess of wealth who has four arms . However , they were forced to keep her in hiding after they were approached by men offering money in exchange for putting their daughter in a circus .

The couple , who earn just $ 1 a day as casual laborers , wanted her to have the operation but were unable to pay for the rare procedure , which had never before been performed in India .

After Patil visited the girl in her village from Narayana Health City hospital in Bangalore , the hospital 's foundation agreed to fund the $ 200,000 operation .

Planning for the surgery took a month , Patil said , and Lakshmi spent that month in the hospital .

Many villagers , however , remained opposed to surgery and were planning to erect a temple to Lakshmi , whom they still revere as sacred . E-mail to a friend

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Girl born with eight limbs makes first public appearance since surgery

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Surgeons say Lakshmi Tatma , two , `` coping very well , '' making good progress

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Lakshmi released from intensive care Tuesday ; appears at press conference

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Operation lasted 27 hours and involved 30 surgeons working eight-hour shifts